Luciano: Murderer's death filled with relief, guilt for one man

When murderer Russell Smrekar died behind bars recently, Mike Hartnett felt conflicting emotions. Relief came with the realization that Smrekar - a persistent, vengeful killer - could never complete the contract slaying he tried to arrange once before on Hartnett. Nor could Smrekar finagle his wa...

Relief came with the realization that Smrekar - a persistent, vengeful killer - could never complete the contract slaying he tried to arrange once before on Hartnett. Nor could Smrekar finagle his way out of prison and personally rub out Hartnett, a former college administrator who helped kick Smrekar out of school and assisted in police investigations of Smrekar.

But his demise also triggered a tinge of guilt for Hartnett. Prodded by cops, Smrekar made a deathbed confession to murdering Michael Mansfield, a former Lincoln College classmate who vanished before he could testify against Smrekar in a 1975 campus theft case. Hartnett had urged Mansfield to agree to cooperate with police.

Hartnett, now 65 and a resident of Tremont, wonders if he did the right thing with Mansfield.

"I think to myself, if I hadn't convinced him to do so, he might be alive today," Hartnett says.

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Smrekar, 56, died Oct. 26 at Menard Correctional Center while serving a 300-year sentenced for the 1976 shotgun murders of Lincoln couple Jay and Robin Fry. At the time of the killings, Jay Fry was slated to testify against Smrekar regarding a $4 grocery store shoplifting.

Earlier this month, Smrekar also admitted to killing Ruth Martin, 51, of Lincoln, who also was to testify in the shoplifting case. Martin's body never has been found.

It's the same situation with the body of Mansfield, 19, a native of the Chicago

suburb of Rolling Meadows. While home on winter break for New Year's Eve 1975, the college student said goodbye to his parents and headed out to visit a friend. They never saw him again.

Mansfield's failure to return to Lincoln College came as a surprise to Hartnett, then an administrator there in charge of housing and student activities. He recalls Mansfield as "a nice, quiet, passive kid."

However, Mansfield had gotten into trouble, because of Smrekar.

The previous academic year - 1974-75, when Smrekar was a freshman - multiple burglaries hit campus dorms. The main suspect had been Smrekar, a Joliet native whom Hartnett saw as "quiet, indifferent." But Smrekar would admit nothing, and school officials could find no evidence in his dorm room.

Frustrated, Hartnett and his colleagues indulged in dark humor that proved prescient, as he recalls: "At the end of the year, the dorm directors and I would blow off steam by having a dinner and announcing the winners of the goofy awards we created. The dorm directors voted unanimously to (pretend to) give the 'Student Most Likely To Spend the Rest of His Life in Jail' award to Smrekar.''

Early in the fall of '75, a student reported the theft of a guitar and record albums from her dorm. The next day, three male students came to Hartnett with a tip, pointing to Mansfield. School officials caught Mansfield with the albums as he tried to dump them down a trash chute, Hartnett says.

Page 2 of 4 - "He admitted Smrekar had given them to him, to hold for him," Hartnett says. "... We believed him."

The school contacted Lincoln police. It was Mansfield's word against Smrekar's. At the urging of police, Hartnett tried to crack Smrekar.

"I just exploded on Russell Smrekar, calling him all kinds of names, trying to get him to react," Hartnett says. "He was as cool as a cucumber."

Smrekar - who later would show unremitting brashness to law enforcement, even after his double-murder conviction - offered to take a polygraph. He flunked, Hartnett says.

So, both students were charged with misdemeanors: Mansfield for possession of stolen property and Smrekar with theft. But prosecutors offered to drop Mansfield's charge, if he were to cooperate in the case against Smrekar.

"I told Mike he needed to testify," Hartnett says.

Mansfield agreed. The trial was to be held in Logan County in January 1976. Mansfield vanished that New Year's Eve.

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Months earlier, right after the theft of the record albums, Smrekar had been expelled from the college by the Student Judiciary Board. Smrekar and Hartnett walked out of the hearing room together. At the doorway, Smrekar stopped, poked Hartnett in the chest and said, "You know, I'm going to drop out of this school tomorrow."

Hartnett replied, "Russ, you're no longer in the school to drop out of it."

Smrekar simply replied, "Oh" - and walked away.

The school assumed he'd returned to Joliet. Then, after the Fry slayings, police asked Hartnett and other school officials about Smrekar; in fact, detectives asked Hartnett to talk to students quietly for any information about Smrekar. Police mentioned that Smrekar might have wanted to wipe out witnesses in a shoplifting case - and perhaps he'd done likewise with Mansfield in the campus theft. Hartnett and his colleagues were shocked by the motive theory.

Adding to the peculiarity, Hartnett also knew the other vanished potential witness, Ruth Martin. A secretary for a realty firm, she sometimes showed houses. Hartnett and his wife went to that firm for help seeking a new home, and she obliged by driving them around to point out dwellings for sale.

During the ride, Martin mentioned that she'd recently shown one of the houses to a male client. Hartnett asked if she ever worried about being alone in a home with an unknown man. Martin thought it preposterous to ever feel endangered in her home town.

"She scoffed and said, 'Mike, this is Lincoln,'" Hartnett remembers.

Much later, after Martin had vanished in June 1976, a grand jury met to consider murder charges against Smrekar. Prosecutors worried that a close friend might offer a bogus alibi, hurting the chances of winning an indictment. To cast aspersions on the character of that friend, prosecutors called Hartnett to testify. He told the grand jury that the friend and her dormmate got in an argument, prompting the friend to dump detergent in the dormmate's fish tank, killing all the fish.

Page 3 of 4 - As Hartnett left the grand jury room, the friend walked in. He believes the friend later found out about Hartnett's testimony - and likely told Smrekar. For the next two weeks, Hartnett and his wife got crank phone calls at home.

After Smrekar's arrest, the friend left the school. Still, the friend would often visit Smrekar in jail, and one day stopped at the college to visit Hartnett. The friend tried to pump him for information about the prosecution's case, but Hartnett offered nothing. After the friend left, Hartnett called police, who encouraged him to continue those conversations to glean any inside dope on Smrekar, if the opportunity ever happened again.

Indeed, for the next several weeks, the friend stopped to chat with Hartnett once a week. After one visit, though, several students burst into Hartnett's office, blurting, "Mr. Hartnett! (The Smrekar friend) threatened to kill you!"

He reported the allegation to police, but refused to divulge the students' names, for fear of their safety.

"Witnesses were being murdered," he says.

As far as Hartnett knows, that friend never committed any serious crimes - though Hartnett lost track of that friend's whereabouts. She could not be located for this story.

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Hartnett didn't attend Smrekar's trial, but followed proceedings in the local newspaper. On the stand, two cellmates alleged that Smrekar bragged of having $10,000 stashed away, and he offered $5,000 to anyone who could arrange a hit on a relative of the Frys, another possible witness.

At the time, Hartnett pondered, "I wondered what the other $5,000 was for?" - though he figured he knew the answer. And his suspicion was confirmed, after trial. Police told him that Smrekar had offered the other $5,000 to anyone who would have Hartnett killed.

Hartnett's reaction at the time: "I'm glad he's in jail."

He also was glad that at repeated parole hearings, Smrekar was denied every time When he heard of Smrekar's death, though, he felt no real sense of relief.

Instead, after all that time - though Smrekar long had been suspected of killing Mansfield - Hartnett had harbored a tiny hope that Mansfield was alive and in hiding. Smrekar's confession ended that hope.

Mansfield's parents now live in Florida. They did not return a reporter's call for comment about this story.

Hartnett, who now runs an online craft publication, acknowledges he did the right thing: criminals must be prosecuted whenever possible. And had Hartnett not encouraged Mansfield to testify, Mansfield would have had a criminal record. Still, Hartnett harbors a sliver of self-doubt.